Little Soul

I blogged a couple of weeks ago (9-6-11) about a homeless man that hops trains and had a pit bull with 10 puppies. Chain of Hope was able to get 7 of the ten before he hopped a train and left town for North Dakota. We had the babies in foster care and they were doing pretty well. They all went through the diarrhea, de-worming, a parvo scare, etc. But they all made it through everything and were thriving, except one little guy. He just never was very healthy, always behind the others, etc. He really struggled and then on a Saturday morning he started showing some weakness in the back end and wasn’t eating well. We were scared about distemper, but the next day his back legs looked like they were kind of shrunken and weak. We didn’t know what was going on, but we knew we would get him into the vet first thing Monday a.m. He was still eating and drinking and peeing and pooping.

Kendra was fostering these little guys. She called me early that morning and said that the puppy had a terrible odor and that his skin on his back legs was black. It was like his skin was dying. He couldn’t walk anymore. There was something very seriously wrong with this pup. Kendra had to go do our adoption spot on NBC Action News, so Judy and I took the little guy to the vet. It looked terrible, it smelled terrible and I’m sure he felt terrible by now. The legs looked like they had died. It was the most bazaar thing. Whatever this was had come on very quickly and by the time we got him to the vet, it was really bad. We had no choice but to euthanize this poor little one. It was so very sad. The vet said that there was some kind of vascular problem and the blood flow had been cut off for whatever reason and his little limbs were just dying. It was like he had gangrene, the vet said. It was truly awful. We’d never seen anything like it.

Unfortunately, this was a tough litter to deal with. We didn’t save them all, but we did what we could. We have to keep our chins up because it is overwhelming and depressing out there. Thanks for keeping us out in the trenches.